Markandeya tells Yudhishthira of Savitri, born to Ashvapati of Madra after eighteen years of worship. She chooses Satyavan though Narada foretells his death within a year. She fasts three nights before the day, goes with him to the forest, and when Yama himself comes, saying the prince is too good for his messengers, she follows and speaks. He grants four boons excepting the life, then a fifth without exception, and she asks for Satyavan's life, since the promised sons need him. Yama frees him with a life of four hundred years. Dyumatsena regains sight and, when his usurper is killed by a minister, his throne.
East India · OdishaAll traditionsOdia🪔 Vat Savitri and Sabitri Brata
In Odisha, Bihar, Uttar Pradesh and Nepal the vow is kept on the new moon of Jyeshtha. In Odisha women bathe, wear new saris and bangles, fast, offer soaked pulses, mangoes, jackfruit, palm fruit and bananas, and listen to the Odia Sabitri Brata Katha read aloud.
What is different here:
Kept a fortnight earlier, on the new moon; an Odia vow-book is read; seasonal fruit offering.
Ashvapati and his queen Malati worship the goddess Savitri at Pushkara; a daughter is born first. A year after the marriage Satyavan falls from a tree and dies. Yama tells Savitri she cannot follow in a mortal body and speaks of karma; she questions him on karma, the soul and devotion, and his answers fill many chapters. At the end she returns with Satyavan, and by Yama's blessing her father has sons and her father-in-law his sight and kingdom.
What is different here:
Shakta frame: the princess is tied to the goddess; death by a fall; the walk becomes a long teaching by Yama.
South India · Tamil NaduAll traditionsTamil🪔 Karadaiyan Nombu
Savitri prepares by worshipping Kamakshi, fasting and standing like a tree for three days; the day is the first of Panguni. After Yama takes the thumb-sized life she stays by the body and worships Kamakshi with wild flowers and fruit, making the food offering from what she has: a cake of clay and butter of tree sap. Yama says the worship is wasted. She follows him south, praises his learning, obtains the four boons and argues that Dharmaraja's word cannot be false. Women now offer a rice-flour and jaggery cake with butter and tie a yellow thread.
What is different here:
Adds the goddess Kamakshi, the clay cake and sap butter, and a fixed calendar moment; four boons then the claim.
South India · Tamil NaduAll traditionsTamil🪔 Karadaiyan Nombu
Savitri meets Satyavan carrying his blind parents in baskets; she cooks the adai and offers it before going to the forest; Yama offers three boons (a son for her father, the kingdom for her in-laws, children for herself) and, smiling, sends her back to her husband.
What is different here:
Three boons, not five; the cake is cooked at home beforehand; the baskets recall the Shravana story and are not in the epic.
West India · Maharashtra, Gujarat, GoaAll traditions🪔 Vat Savitri and Sabitri Brata
In Maharashtra, Goa, Gujarat and parts of the north, married women fast and wind thread round a banyan on the full moon of Jyeshtha (three days from the thirteenth). Local tradition holds that it was under a banyan that Savitri won Satyavan back.
What is different here:
The banyan, absent from the epic, is the centre of the rite; kept on the full moon.
Sources: The Mahabharata, tr. K. M. Ganguli (1883-96), sections read for the Vedic layer; Sabitri Brata, When Women In Odisha Pray For Husband's Longevity, OdishaBytes; Savitri Vrata (Wikipedia); Savitri and Satyavan (Wikipedia); The Srimad Devi Bhagawatam, tr. Swami Vijnanananda (1921-22), Book 9 chapters 26-28 and 38; Karadaiyar Nonbu (Vratam), Sri Kanchi Kamakoti Peetham; Karadaiyan Nonbu (Wikipedia); Story of Karadaiyan Nombu, Hindu Blog (Abhilash Rajendran)